Mary Maher, who launched the business with her sister Brenda in 2000, said they will be personally contacting customers who were planning on taking home cakes after this weekend, to discuss each order. The sisters have at least 500 outstanding orders, stretching through the wedding season. They had about 20 orders for this week.

"We are just asking for a little patience because we lost everything in this fire," said Mary Maher, adding that she had been fielding frantic emails from customers worried about their orders. "It has been less than a day... I have no equipment, I don't even have a rolling pin."

"We are going to go order by order and try to refund the money, and hopefully our insurance will cover all we lose," Brenda Maher said as she sifted through ink-smeared orders damaged by water in the fire.

Mary Maher estimates that she and her sister lost about $70,000 worth of high-end baking and decorating equipment in the fire that tore through the structure at 2207 W. Belmont Avenue. They had insurance, she said.

Despite an outpouring of offers to help from local bakeries, Mary Maher said that they had not made any decision about either finding temporary space or partnering with other businesses in the short term.

The sisters, who gained attention for their unique designs, said they still hope to create many of the hundreds of cakes ordered for the coming months if they can find a new location by the end of April or early May.

"We are not trying to scam anybody. We are honest businesswomen, and, of course, we care about our customers," said Brenda Maher. "But ultimately there are many things we are dealing with right now."

The fire remains under investigation.

In a message posted on the Cakegirls Web site late Monday, the Maher sisters wrote, "We are terribly sorry to say that we will be unable to fulfill your orders. We will contact you personally for reimbursement and we hope that you have ample time to make other arrangements... this process may take a week or so."

Mary Maher said that they are currently trying to retrieve order information from two water-logged laptops that they retrieved from the building. She said it would likely 'take months' before Cakegirls was up and running again.

"We salvaged nothing," said Mary Maher, who was featured with her sister on We TV's series "Amazing Wedding Cakes."